Cover: The cover figure shows a mechanism-based model of the pathogenesis of human cancer. Data from mouse models of cancer or hereditary human cancer indicate that genetic changes or epigenetic changes alone can initiate tumor formation. Sporadic cancers, which comprise 90-95% of all cancers, almost uniformly exhibit both genetic and epigenetic defects genome-wide, and these mechanisms show substantial interaction (arrows). That is, epigenetic events can cause genetic events, and vice versa. Determining the relative contribution of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms to tumor formation is an important goal of current research, and should be facilitated by the whole cancer genome and epigenome approaches discussed herein. Depending on the cancer type, each mechanism can be operative early, late or continuously in the development of the tumor. See Romulo M. Brena and Joseph F. Costello, pp. R96-R105, this issue, for further information.
[Table of Contents]